apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

I agree with her 100%. You do not need to be wealthy to eat sustainable, local food - anyone who has been to a farmer's market knows that is it very affordable and the fact that you know you are supporting local business is just an added plus.

Definitely agree. Whenever I go to the farmer's market, I'm always surprised by how little everything costs, considering its deliciousness and nutritional value.

Kingsolver was also making a larger point - that if you pay a little more for organic produce now, you will reduce health care costs later - so eating locally/organically is a good investment in your quality of life and life expectancy, and that of your children.

I generally agree, but wanted to mention that it's not always about cost at farmers markets. Underserved communities are exactly that, underserved. Healthier food options are usually not as accessible in poorer communities. Parents work longer or unusual hours and can't take the time to go to local farmer's markets. Whole Foods type markets, while often organic and local, are indeed more expensive than generic foods.
While I also agree that eating organic and local reduces health problems in the future, organics are more expensive to farm, at least currently.
Let's hope that local foods become more popular so they can be accessible and 'the norm' for all communities.

rebexy, I'd just like to point out that overall, the poorest and most underserved communities are rural. Apart from poor inner-city communities, which do exist but get an undue amount of media attention, rural farming communities are suffering the most economically. Rural people may be surrounded by fertile (or once-fertile) soil, but I suspect that government subsidies for corn and soybeans have steered farmers toward monoculture and away from a vibrant, diversified, organic food culture - leaving the soil, and the people who live on it, impoverished and hopeless.

This chart summarizes income and how more urban states are richer while rural ones are poorer: http://tinyurl.com/yfgyro

The point made by MMadden is I think very true. My grandparents were cattle ranchers and my uncle's family who inherited the business (and later lost it) are the prime example of a rural family that lives on McDonald's and Big Gulps, while barely scraping by. And, unlike the wiry & healthy old cowboys that they came from they are fat. McDonald's buys beef from South America, because they claim that the N. American beef supply can't meet their demand. In a world without corn and soy subsidies, but instead support for local and organic agriculture, I am betting my uncle's family could be living a much more prosperous and satisfying life on their on land.

Unfortunately, I think it will take more than a movement to eat local to change things, as our society is so caught up in quantity and "have it now" over quality. We need a movement to "stop and smell the roses" or perhaps "stop and taste the asparagus." Getting back to the last chapter, I think that getting kids educated about agriculture and teaching them to appreciate slow food in elementary school will go a long way in raising adults that can tell the difference between fresh and day old asparagus.

I'm with waterreflecting - a true social shift from being obsessed with time to learning how to simply enjoy life for what it is, and that includes green building, food, science ... etc. Too much emphasis is put on how much money we have and what we own. Educating kids is a big key to making sure that our future isn't going down the crapper (like those McDonald's burgers).

At Thanksgiving dinner, what did I find on the table? You guessed it asparagus. I'm vegetarian and didn't have too many choices at this particular meal, so I ate quite a bit. After reading this chapter, it really was obvious to me that it didn't taste as good as the asparagus I ate in the thick of asparagus season. Who knows how far it traveled to get to my plate, likely significantly further than I traveled to get to the Thanksgiving table.

I haven't read the book yet (still finishing Omnivore's Dilemma).

waterreflecting,

You are so right that the education needs to begin with the children. High profile chefs like Alice Waters in the US and Jamie Oliver in the UK have made headlines for trying to change the ridiculous feeding practices in today's schools.

My wife just returned from thanksgiving with her family in rural Kansas so we had a long depressing conversation about the demise of the community she grew up in which she gives credit to Wal-Mart for.

She comes from the land of feed lots. Her family comes from a long line of cowboys. Her uncle won't even eat eggs from the store or in a restaurant!

There are a lot of people like that. So many people that grew up on farm fresh eggs, pasture raised beef (cornfed or not). Now they work among the factory farms and are expected to eat the food at Applebees?

What a joke. They know that places like that are serving old cow meat.

Barbara and Camille are good teachers. They manage to convince without being preachy.

Because I am reading the book, I actually modified my behavior last week. I walked to my neighborhood supermarket and bought a single potato, onions, garlic, dried beans and a bunch of organic swiss chard to make soup.

At my neighborhood major supermarket chain, I was pleasantly surprised to find an increasingly wider variety of produce than a year ago. For the non-standard fare, they sold organic when available. For instance, the only swiss chard for sale was organic. Both organic and conventional carrots were available. In a nod to the local demographics, I found Asian and Latin ingredients. Cactus stir-fry anybody?

I am eating the soup right now for lunch while reading blogs.

Her advice to eat seasonally made great sense. But, I eat organic and local when I can do it reasonably easily. That is, I will pay a little bit more, but not go far out of my way to seek out local and organic produce. It has to be close to work or home, and it has to be open when I am off work. Farmer's markets are great, but they are not convenient for a harried working mom. Additionally, driving farther to do my shopping would negate the energy savings of eating local produce.

I read an article in an alumni magazine that looked at the energy budget for a box of cereal (perhaps corn flakes). They assumed that the grain was grown in the midwest and the cereal was produced in Michigan, then shipped by truck to one of the coasts. They further reasoned that people traveled on average 2 miles to the grocery store and bought an average of 20 items. Using the US fleet average mpg, they found that the 2 mile trip from the store to the consumer's home took more energy than all the rest of the production and shipping combined!

When I read this chapter, I had peruvian asparagus in the fridge, and it definitely made me not-very-excited to eat it.

I've been trying to prepare local and/or organic food for the past year or so, particularly with meat, after reading Omnivore's Dilemma and Fast Food Nation. It has definitely translated into eating somewhat less meat at home (not necessarily a bad thing, I suppose) and spending a lot more for it. I do love buying meat at the farmer's market, even though (unlike the produce), it is WAY more expensive than supermarket meat.

Because of my aversion to factory-farmed meats, when I can't get to a farmer's market, I've been known to buy organic or pastured, grass fed meats from Australia and New Zealand from Trader Joe's and Fairway. (This is also much more affordable than farmer's market meat, in my experience.) I do feel carbon penalty guilt with these purchases, but at least I feel like I'm getting the health benefits and "happy cow" benefits. It's a tough choice.


I do love Kingsolver's point that we should eat seasonal produce. It makes so much sense that we shouldn't settle for crappy out-of-season produce just because we can.

What about stuff that's never available locally? Do we New Yorkers just cross citrus, bananas, pineapple, mangoes, etc off our lists forever?

To the point about local food being for the wealthy: NYC has farmer's markets all over the city, in all boroughs. This is great for access to local foods for less wealthy New Yorkers, but most of the smaller neighborhood markets are only in the late spring, summer, and early fall. I do think it's hard to get local food year round if you don't have the means... (and again, the meat at the supermarket is SO much cheaper!)

In response to deoxy's last question about foods that don't grow in our particular geographic region. I've been pondering the same question, while continuing to drink my organic Mexican/Floridian orange juice (a luxury I may have to give up). My dad still puts an orange in everyone's Christmas stocking, because he received oranges as a kid. Clementines are also a winter tradition. I think that one of Kingsolver's points is that we think we need oranges 365 days a year. When in fact we don't. We might WANT them, but we could get our vitamin C from potatoes (1 serving is 45% of the RDA). Baked or sauted in EVOO they are actually good for you!

The Buddhist Monk Thich Nhat Hanh has a little meditation story about eating an orange slice by slice and savoring each bite. Life would not be any fun if we could never have a mango or an orange, but life my also be sweeter if we had these items as special occasion treats, which we savored bite for bite.

I like the idea of balance.

We are in a global market and it should remain that way. We just need balance. How to achieve that? That's the big question I have.

We have plenty of oranges in CA and FL. If their crops are damaged and the prices go up, I can live with that. I don't need to eat imported oranges. But not say imports are bad! I love French cheese, please, keep importing!

Today's capitalism does not embrace moderation or balance so I understand how my ideal would be hard to achieve.

I've heard people talk about the labor in other countries that exists because of our importation of produce like asparagus.

Hmmm.....here is another complicated angle to the situation.

Grace2, you made a comment that confused me:

"Farmer's markets are great, but they are not convenient for a harried working mom."

Why? Why are they more inconvenient than a conventional grocery store?

Here are my own observations about farmer's markets:
1. they are closer than you think - most urban areas have them
2. they are great for kids, who love the samples and the ability to help Mom touch and smell produce and pick out what is the best quality
3. they are also great for kids because many have live, family-friendly music. At my own farmer's market the musicians are always surrounded by a rapt audience of children accompanied by a parent, while the other (I assume) does the shopping.
4. farmer's markets, and the meal-planning and cooking related to them, really lend themselves to family participation. Many people approach food shopping and cooking as wasted time - time they are stuck doing a chore away from their children. Why should this be? Farmer's markets are fun, child-friendly and accessible, and children love cooking with delicious, whole ingredients. Invite children to pick out a new veggie, and help them figure out how to make it delicious once you get back home.

I do realize that farmer's markets are usually held once a week, while the average grocery store is open all the time. If scheduling conflicts exist, a good option is for a family to sign up for a community farming program where seasonal, organic produce is delivered to their door on a regular basis. What could be more convenient and painless than that?

I don't mean to argue, but bringing children into the process of buying and cooking food is something I am very passionate about.

I think when people say that farmer's markets don't work for them because they're too busy, they're really just afraid of change. It's not like you need to fully give yourself over to them - they can supplement quickie, after-work runs to the supermarket.

This is Grace2 in response to mmadden's question.

I used to shop the Berkeley Bowl weekly and the Boulder farmer's market twice a week. Now that I live in North Redondo Beach, work in the El Segundo Employment Center, shopping farmer's markets has become highly problematic.

I have researched farmer's markets at length and visited many of them. For where I live and work, they are all problematic.

There are several weekday morning ones at the Hermosa or Redondo Beach piers. Like many couples in our situation, my husband goes to work early and I take care of my daughter each morning. I manage to do a little housework and get my daughter off to school before I go to work. There is no way I can wake her up 2 hours early, bundle her up and drive to the pier to shop those farmer's markets before getting her to school and me to work on time.

There is a small one in downtown El Segundo, a 20 minute round trip drive from my lab, but they are open 3-6 on Thursdays and I work 9-6. Additionally, my husband's work as a field scientist requires that he travels 30% time. On those weeks, I make a mad dash from work at 5:45 to pick up my daughter before 6:00 when they start charging us $2/minute. The teachers also need me to be on time so that they can go home to their families.

On Saturday mornings, there is a large and wonderful farmer's market in Torrance at Wilson Park--one of the largest in the greater LA area. Unfortunately, it is 6.2 miles away from home and we would need to cross some very bicycle unfriendly territory to get there. Taking a bus there on a Saturday would take over an hour each way with bus transfers. So I buckle up my kid in the car seat and drive there. Then, I circle the parking lot looking for a parking spot. Once my daughter and I are there, she heads for the chocolate crepe booth and I won't bore you with what happens if I don't cave. By the time we get home, it will be past lunch time.

And let's not forget about soccer, tae kwon do or any of her other extra-curricular activities that take up our weekends.

The life of a two career couple with kids has "insufficient margin" as we say in the satellite business. All the work of running a household and raising kids takes place during evenings and weekends. If one parent is gone (or working feverishly to get ready for a trip or a satellite launch, or recovering physically from a trip), then the housework piles up. Remember, the home workday takes place in small bursts before and after two other full-time jobs. It can take us 3 weeks to recover some sense of normalcy around our house and garden after a 10 day field trip.

I do try to grow a small amount of food with her in our little plot of LA area land.
See our strawberry
http://badmomgoodmom.blogspot.com/2007/04/house-and-garden.html
or our super sweet Nantes carrots
http://badmomgoodmom.blogspot.com/2007/07/vacation-wrapup.html
or our flowers
http://badmomgoodmom.blogspot.com/2006/05/bad-neighbors.html

You know the saying about how we were all good parents until we had kids? It is harder than I ever imagined.

All of this is terribly complicated. I sympathize with Grace2's Farmer's Market dilemma. We have a seasonal farmers market within a 1 mile walk from our house, yet we often drove over the summer, because walking in 90 degrees and direct sun was unpleasant and we figured not a good choice for a newborn. Now that the farmers market season is over, I cannot find local produce at the grocery store that is 4 blocks from my house, but if I drive 10 miles to Whole Foods, I can find local produce that was grown a few miles of my home. 4 blocks from my house I can buy potatoes grown in Washington, California & New Jersey. How silly.

Perhaps those of us who do not readily have access to local food, just need to start being vocal about asking for it at our local stores and buying local produce in bulk when we have the opportunity. Next year I'd like to look into cold storage and towards fall buy my apples, potatoes, onions and squash in bulk from the farmers market and store them in our cold furnace room.